PREParE SHIPS

Purpose and goal

One of the most common reasons for ship collisions today is the lack of information about the intentions of other vessels. This especially applies to navigation in restricted areas, such as fairways, port areas and inland water ways. With an increased focus on autonomous vessels in the shipping industry, this problem is expected to grow.

Prepare Ships is creating a smart positioning solution by developing and demonstrating a data fusion of different sensor and signal sources to enable a robust navigation application. The idea is that vessels with accurate positioning based on EGNSS, data and machine-learning should be able to predict future positions of nearby vessels. This will be done through a dynamic exchange of information ship-to-ship and ship-to-land by using VDES to simplify the decision-making and navigation of vessels. Besides a decreased risk for collisions, this also means additional benefits in the form of a more energy effective manoeuvring of the vessels, something which can also reduce the environmental impact of shipping in line with IMO’s targets.

Challenge

Increasing the energy efficiency and safety for vessels in today’s industry, which is challenging related to e.g. recruiting in the sector.

Solution

Together with partners RISE will present and validate a positioning solution. This will be done through development of existing software using Galileo-signals and combining it with nautical information regarding internal and external parameters and sensor technology. The project is expected to develop a navigation decision support system within shipping which will contain the following:

• EGNSS resilience positioning:

The possibility to dynamically predict future positions of other vessels based on the positions reported from the Galileo receiver/transmitter.

• Real-time dynamic predictor:

Use data learning in order to obtain information of earlier ship behaviour to exchange near-future positions with vessels in the vicinity and VTS centers (Vessel Traffic Services) to increase safety and improve decision making.

• Ship-to-ship / ship-to-shore interaction:

In order to define the correct requirements for PREParE SHIPS combined positioning solution, a collaborative automated vessel application will be defined and developed. The vessel application will rely on the high availability positioning solution and use it to couple its various navigational systems with ship2ship/ ship2shore and aggregate information received from other connected vessels by using the next generation AIS - VDES.

• Geo-fencing:

Implement and demonstrate a fairway geo-fencing with high precision positioning, utilizing various data sources (e.g. wind and current) as well as a traffic monitoring and predicted positions so it can allow for safe decisions based on robust data. This means that ‘PREParE SHIPS’ also will implement perception layer sensor fusion that uses information collected historically in similar conditions based on machine learning-hybrid models.

Effect

PREParE SHIPS is expected to increase safety and efficiency significantly and will be the base of future autonomous operations and standardisations. Based on the usage of Galileo’s positioning services, PREParE SHIPS is also expected to create value for companies.